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Disturbing climate studies, like wildfires and extreme weather, have appeared one after another this past year. Disturbing not because they are telling us anything really new, but rather that they confirm what’s been apparent for some time now. First: Clima

Disturbing climate studies, like wildfires and extreme weather, have appeared one after another this past year. Disturbing not because they are telling us anything really new, but rather that they confirm what’s been apparent for some time now. First: Climate change is happening. It’s doing what many scientists predicted it would do. But it’s happening faster than they thought. Worse than they thought. Second: We—as in humans and human institutions—aren’t doing anywhere nearly enough to address it, to adapt and ameliorate, to do all we can to keep things from getting worse than what’s already baked into our future. No pun intended.
On Wednesday more such news came from two new studies, as reported by Kendra Pierre-Louis at The New York Times. One says global carbon emissions are rising like a “speeding freight train.” Part of the reason for this: more cars, more driving, and a pitifully small percentage of zero-emissions vehicles on the road.
“We’ve seen oil use go up five years in a row,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of earth system science at Stanford and an author of one of two studies published Wednesday. “That’s really surprising.”
Worldwide, carbon emissions are expected to increase by 2.7 percent in 2018, according to the new research, which was published by the Global Carbon Project, a group of 100 scientists from more than 50 academic and research institutions and one of the few organizations to comprehensively examine global emissions numbers. Emissions rose 1.6 percent last year, the researchers said, ending a three-year plateau.
Very bad news. Two months ago, the message of the 700-page International Panel on Climate Change’s Global Warming of 1.5 ºC (2.7 degrees F) could be stated simply: The situation is worse than previously thought, some changes are happening sooner than previously expected, and we have to change things drastically over the next 12 years or we are screwed. “We,” as in the humans whose collective behavior brought us to this circumstance. The scientists who produced the report are not saying we have a dozen years to fiddle around planning what we will do and how we will do it. If we wait to start in 2030, the impacts will be much worse and harder to handle.
However, the problem with following the IPCC’s guidance to act now has many obstacles in the way. Call them the three Ds: Deniers, Delayers, Despairers. Read more

Politics

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The scripted violence scenario represented by Christopher Hasson, the 49-year-old Coast Guard lieutenant arrested last week and charged with plotting a massive domestic terrorist attack on leading media and Democratic Party figures, is the stuff of national n

The scripted violence scenario represented by Christopher Hasson, the 49-year-old Coast Guard lieutenant arrested last week and charged with plotting a massive domestic terrorist attack on leading media and Democratic Party figures, is the stuff of national nightmares.
But the nightmare is hardly over. Even more frightening is the realization that Hasson likely is just one of many radicalized white men poised to take violent action on “a scale rarely seen.”
Certainly Hasson’s plans were remarkably wide-reaching. Inspired in large part by Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik—and in particular by Breivik’s ardent belief in the white-nationalist hoax theory called “cultural Marxism”—Hasson wrote: “I am dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on earth.”
Foremost among his targets were leading media and Democratic Party figures, including MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, Ari Melber, and Chris Hayes, CNN’s Van Jones and Don Lemon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker.
To carry out these assassinations, Hasson had amassed an armory in his basement, including 15 weapons and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. In his deleted emails, investigators found Hasson musing about carrying out a “two-pronged attack” using bioterror weapons and a sniper attack.
He also was an ardent white nationalist. In addition to his admiration for Breivik, Hasson corresponded with other neo-Nazis. He was particularly keen on the work of white supremacist Harold Covington, who promoted creating a “white homeland” in the Pacific Northwest, but who died in 2018.
“How long can we hold out there and prevent niggerization of the Northwest until whites wake up on their own or are forcibly made to make a decision whether to roll over and die or wake up on their own remains to be seen,” Hasson wrote Covington in a 2017 draft letter.
However, when Hasson was first arrested on Feb. 14, it was on mundane drug and weapons charges, and hardly merited a blip on anyone’s radar. Hasson was caught because he had been buying the addictive painkiller Tramadol from a drug dealer while stationed at U.S. Coast Guard headquarters in Baltimore.
Those circumstances underscore the haphazard nature of American law enforcement’s handling of far-right domestic terrorism: Hasson wasn’t caught because investigators were seeking neo-Nazis within the ranks of the military—which is indeed a serious and ongoing issue, but one which very few resources are directed to addressing—but simply by fortunate happenstance.

House resolution to end Trump's national non-emergency will be introduced on Friday

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A week into the national non-emergency, Democrats are preparing to introduce a bill to end Donald Trump’s “I didn’t have to do this” farce. The very brief resolution, which simply declares Trump’s emergency declaration “terminated,” will be fil

A week into the national non-emergency, Democrats are preparing to introduce a bill to end Donald Trump’s “I didn’t have to do this” farce. The very brief resolution, which simply declares Trump’s emergency declaration “terminated,” will be filed soon after the House opens for business on Friday. Its passage is being spearheaded in the House by Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who has stated that he already has at least one Republican ready to sign on to the bill.
As CNN reported on Thursday, Nancy Pelosi spent the day lining up the vote with Democratic House members and inviting Republicans to join them in ending Trump’s overreach. A number of Republicans in both the House and the Senate have expressed something ranging from “discomfort” to “outrage” at Trump’s action, but it’s not known if any of them signed on as co-sponsors of the resolution before a Thursday afternoon deadline.
According to USA Today, the bill will be introduced early on Friday and is expected to pass in the Democratic-majority House. It would then face a required vote in the Senate within 18 days—though it could happen sooner if Mitch McConnell were to bring it to the floor. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is preparing to introduce a matching resolution.
Should the bill pass out of the House with anything more than one or two Republican votes, it could add to pressures to what CNN is describing as “the longest 18 days” of Mitch McConnell’s career. McConnell publicly announced that he was supporting Trump’s emergency declaration in order to get his signature on the government funding bill and avoid a second shutdown, but he did so over the vocal protest of several members of his own party.
If a handful of those Republicans decided to follow through and sign on to support the resolution, it could pass in the Senate as well as in the House, putting it on Trump’s desk for what the White House has already announced is a certain veto. But just getting that far would risk a schism in the Republican Party over signing away the role of Congress in order to support Trump. After a decade of chest-thumping about executive overreach for every minor action taken by Barack Obama, Republicans finally have a chance to vote on something that addresses a genuinely massive and obvious abuse of power. But Mitch McConnell is likely to use his role in the Senate to protect Trump’s gutting of the Senate’s power right up to the last bitter moment.

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● NC-09: On Thursday, after four days of hearings into charges that Republican Mark Harris benefitted from an illegal absentee ballot scheme in last year’s race for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, the bipartisan state Board of Elections unanimously voted to hold a new election. This will be the first time a re-vote has occurred in a House race since 1974, when a malfunctioning voting machine was enough to cast doubt on Republican Henson Moore’s 44-vote win in a contest in Louisiana; Moore decisively won the do-over the following year.
Campaign Action
Democrat Dan McCready, a businessman and retired Marine, has long been preparing to compete here again, and there’s no question his fellow Democrats will give him the chance to try once more. There’s far more uncertainty, however, on the GOP side. Last year, the Republican-led state legislature passed a law mandating new primaries whenever a new election is ordered in a congressional contest. That’s a change from prior practice, which would have required only a new general election be held between the existing nominees—something that would have left the GOP stuck with Harris. On Thursday, McCready’s attorney, Marc Elias, declined to say if he’d challenge this new law in court.
If there’s a new Republican primary, Harris is likely to face plenty of opposition if he runs again. That’s a big if, though: Harris, who said at Thursday’s hearing that he’d suffered two strokes in January and was “struggling” to make it through his testimony as a witness, has not yet said what he’ll do, though after the board’s vote, his wife said «we will think about» another bid.
It will be up to the board, rather than Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, to schedule this new race. However, it’s possible that the new election for the 9th District will be held the same day as the pending special election for the 3rd District, which became open after GOP Rep. Walter Jones died last week. Since Cooper is tasked with scheduling the 3rd District vote, he may end up having a say in when voters in the 9th District will go to the polls if the board chooses to follow his lead.
The board’s vote to hold a new election capped off a dramatic week of proceedings that were nothing but a disaster for Harris. On Wednesday, his own son, federal prosecutor John Harris, testified that he'd warned his father about McCrae Dowless, the operative accused of masterminding the illegal absentee ballot harvesting operation on behalf of Harris’ campaign.

Cartoon: It’s a wall emergency!

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Vimeo Video
Well, Trump’s emergency declaration is here — time to get ready for ripping off funding from military construction and anti-drug trafficking activities, hooray! We’ve got to build a wall that’s already tremendously built and take mone

x
Vimeo Video
Well, Trump’s emergency declaration is here — time to get ready for ripping off funding from military construction and anti-drug trafficking activities, hooray! We’ve got to build a wall that’s already tremendously built and take money from anti-drug trafficking to pay for a thing that cuts down on drug trafficking. Follow?
This wall (or wall-like thing made up of beautiful vertical slats) is a grand monument to Trump’s “build the wall” campaign chant. That’s it. It’s not really about doing anything. Illegal immigration is way down. Drugs aren’t sped through the desert, they come through official ports of entry. Hordes of asylum-seekers don’t run through the desert, they tend to go to Border Patrol posts and turn themselves in so they can begin the legal asylum process.
Never mind the details about the wall and immigration, let’s just mess with the separation of powers and the U.S. Constitution. How’s that for not politically correct? This wall will continue to be a giant political vacuum that sucks attention from everything else. (Except maybe more indictments?) Enjoy the cartoon, and be sure to visit me on my Patreon page for behind-the-scenes goodies!

Science

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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. What a week. It had looked a bit quiet with just a few big rounds to cover. I was looking forward to a relaxed episode, frankl

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. What a week. It had looked a bit quiet with just a few big rounds to cover. I was looking forward to a relaxed episode, frankly. But no, as Kate and I were prepping the show notes, the […]

Circle raises $20m Series B to help even more parents limit screen time

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Circle makes a fantastic screen time management tool and today the company announced a round of funding to help fuel its growth. The $20 million series B included participation from Netgear and T-Mobile, along with Third Kind Venture Capital and follow-on inv

Circle makes a fantastic screen time management tool and today the company announced a round of funding to help fuel its growth. The $20 million series B included participation from Netgear and T-Mobile, along with Third Kind Venture Capital and follow-on investments from Relay Ventures and other Series A participants. With this round of funding, […]

Japanese internet giant Recruit has a new $25M blockchain fund

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Crypto market prices may be down significantly, but new investors continue to enter the blockchain space. The latest is Recruit Holdings, the $45 billion Japanese internet giant that owns Glassdoor among other things, which quietly launched a $25 million fund

Crypto market prices may be down significantly, but new investors continue to enter the blockchain space. The latest is Recruit Holdings, the $45 billion Japanese internet giant that owns Glassdoor among other things, which quietly launched a $25 million fund. The fund is based out of Singapore and it closed in November 2018, but its […]

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For the past 150 years, scientists have hotly debated a mysterious creature that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. And now, with the discovery of stunningly detailed fossils in Morocco, paleontologists have finally ID'd the bizarre life-forms.

For the past 150 years, scientists have hotly debated a mysterious creature that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. And now, with the discovery of stunningly detailed fossils in Morocco, paleontologists have finally ID'd the bizarre life-forms.

Culture

New Species of Tiny Tyrannosaur Sheds Light on T. Rex Relative

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Tyrannosaurus rex wasn’t always king of the prehistoric jungle. One hundred million years ago, carnivorous allosaurs were considered an apex predator. But how and when the theropods were replaced by tyrannosaurs remains a […]
The post New Species

Tyrannosaurus rex wasn’t always king of the prehistoric jungle. One hundred million years ago, carnivorous allosaurs were considered an apex predator. But how and when the theropods were replaced by tyrannosaurs remains a […]
The post New Species of Tiny Tyrannosaur Sheds Light on T. Rex Relative appeared first on Geek.com.

An Iconic American Muscle Car Gets the Lego Treatment

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New York Toy Fair wrapped up earlier this week, but don’t think for a second that means Lego is done making announcements. They’re back at it already with a a jaw-dropping take on […]
The post An Iconic American Muscle Car Gets the Lego Trea

New York Toy Fair wrapped up earlier this week, but don’t think for a second that means Lego is done making announcements. They’re back at it already with a a jaw-dropping take on […]
The post An Iconic American Muscle Car Gets the Lego Treatment appeared first on Geek.com.

Search Google Maps For Safe Drug Disposal Locations

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Google is doing its part to fight the opioid crisis with a new tool for Maps and Search. The company this week launched a seven-state pilot to help people dispose of prescription drugs […]
The post Search Google Maps For Safe Drug Disposal Locations app

Google is doing its part to fight the opioid crisis with a new tool for Maps and Search. The company this week launched a seven-state pilot to help people dispose of prescription drugs […]
The post Search Google Maps For Safe Drug Disposal Locations appeared first on Geek.com.

Sport

Howard Beck has ‘no doubt’ LeBron can sustain this high level of play for the Lakers

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Bleacher Report Senior NBA Writer Howard Beck joins Chris Broussard on the show today. Hear why he believes LeBron James can sustain a playoff-like style of play for the rest of the season to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to the NBA Playoffs.

Bleacher Report Senior NBA Writer Howard Beck joins Chris Broussard on the show today. Hear why he believes LeBron James can sustain a playoff-like style of play for the rest of the season to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to the NBA Playoffs.

Aprilia reveals overhauled 2019 MotoGP livery

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The Noale marque displayed its new colours in Qatar ahead of the second and final pre-season test at the Losail track, which commences on Saturday and runs until Monday.Instead of the white, red and green design of 2018, the RS-GP has been decked out largely

The Noale marque displayed its new colours in Qatar ahead of the second and final pre-season test at the Losail track, which commences on Saturday and runs until Monday.Instead of the white, red and green design of 2018, the RS-GP has been decked out largely in black for the new campaign, with red, green and yellow highlights.Aprilia has made several key changes as it looks to rebound from ...Keep reading

Toro Rosso, McLaren finally reach agreement on Key

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Key will officially leave Toro Rosso on March 23 and begin working for McLaren from March 25, with the transition happening between the Australian and Bahrain Grands Prix.Toro Rosso will promote current deputy technical director Jody Egginton to the technica

Key will officially leave Toro Rosso on March 23 and begin working for McLaren from March 25, with the transition happening between the Australian and Bahrain Grands Prix.Toro Rosso will promote current deputy technical director Jody Egginton to the technical director role in Key's place.McLaren's hiring of Key last summer prompted a long dispute between the team and Toro Rosso's parent ...Keep reading